of judgment and precision and courage that very few people in any profession ever achieve.”
He looked at the auditorium.
“The F-22 Raptor is the most advanced air superiority fighter in the world,” he said. “There are fewer than two hundred pilots certified to fly it in combat conditions. Captain Miller is one of them.”
I was standing on the stage beside my mother and I was looking at the freshman section, at the middle of the row where I had been sitting, at the general area where the boys
who had made airplane noises at lunch were currently occupying seats. I could not see their specific expressions from this distance. I didn’t need to.
I looked at the wall where teachers were standing.
Mr. Reynolds was in the second cluster from the left.
He was not smiling the way he had smiled in third period. He had the specific expression of a man who has made a significant public error and is in the process of understanding its full dimensions.
My mother spoke for four minutes.
She did not
